Remembering: Joseph Lockard, was in the Army during Pearl Harbor attack

On Dec. 7, 1941, Joseph Lockard and another Army radar operator gave their boss early warning of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

That warning was ignored. The two saw something “larger than anything I had ever seen on radar before,” the Lower Paxton Twp. man said years later. “I knew that something wasn’t right. I just didn’t know what.”

Joseph Lockard of Lower Paxton Twp. was an Army radar operator during the attack of Pearl Harbor.JOHN C. WHITEHEAD/The Patriot-News, file

That something turned into a major attack from the Imperial Japanese Navy that left 2,335 U.S. servicemen dead, 18 American warships sunk or badly damaged and more than 200 U.S. planes destroyed.

Lockard, who died Nov. 2, was modest about that moment in history, which he once called “a footnote” in his life. “I’ve had more life than that,” he said.

He was a 19-year-old private from Williamsport when waves of torpedo planes, dive-bombers and fighter planes from six aircraft carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor. He and another Signal Corps soldier were staffing one of the Army’s new radar stations when the screen went crazy.

Lockard later said there was no way the attack could have been prevented. Yet he also said that if the report had been taken seriously, the Americans might have had a half-hour to prepare for the attack, which could have resulted in less damage.

“You have to understand the laid-back attitude of the military in Hawaii at that time,” he said. “It was a tropical post. It was peacetime. It was a nice place to have a tour of duty.”

Minutes before the Japanese attack, the two radar operators headed back to base to eat. they saw smoke rising from the direction of Pearl Harbor as the attack happened. They helped staff the station.

Jim LaGrand, Messiah College history professor, said that Lockard had a lot of responsibility for a 19-year-old.

“The young men at that time took on a lot of responsibilities and grew up quick,” he said. “The United States and Japan were feuding over control of the South Pacific. Back then, the idea of Japan attacking the United States like that was enormously unbelievable. Nobody thought it could happen, but it did.”

Lockard, in an article he wrote for The Patriot-News in 1991, said “we didn’t know it at the time, but this was actually the first use of radar in warfare by U.S. military forces.”

After the war, Lockard began his civilian life. He was a draftsman and inventor who worked for Sylvania, Litton, GTE. Later, he retired from AMP Inc. as principal project manager and development engineer with more than 35 patents to his name.

When he wasn’t working, he enjoyed being an artist, a poet, and an historian.

John Sgrignoli of Lower Paxton Twp., Lockard’s good friend and neighbor for about 40 years, described Lockard as a quiet, intensely private man.

“He never talked about himself or about Pearl Harbor unless you asked him,” Sgrignoli said.

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